Student Privacy Concerns Raised for Tech Project Tied to Guilford County Schools

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inBloom is a tech project funded largely by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation that is seeking to improve education through data.  One of the school districts participating in the project is Guilford County Schools.  The inBloom initiative was announced about two months ago by what was then called the Social Learning Collaborative. Now that inBloom has been out there a while it's starting to get some attention from parents and advocates, and they aren't real keen on what they're finding as it relates to their children's privacy. There's some noise being made by some folks in New York (more about that below), but so far it doesn't seem to be of concern to anyone in Guilford County. 

Before we get to the privacy issue let's look at what inBloom is trying to do. Here's what you find on the inBloom "Vision" page of its website:

inBloom is dedicated to bringing together the data, content and tools educators need to make personalized learning a reality for every student. To achieve this vision, inBloom:

  • Offers states and districts a secure technology infrastructure to integrate data, services and applications that work together to support personalized learning.
  • Partners with education technology companies, content providers and developers to support the creation of products compatible with this infrastructure.
  • Works with states and districts to help them use this infrastructure to support educators and students.

Seems like a worthy pursuit and they go on to stress on the same webpage that "We recognize the sensitivity of storing student data and place the utmost importance on the privacy and security of that data." They have a full page dedicated to their privacy commitment.

Well as mentioned above some folks in New York aren't satisfied with inBlooms assurances. From the Village Voice:

Parents and advocates opposed to the new initiative believe it will put sensitive student information at risk and allow companies to capitalize on data that parents never consented to release.

The New York State Education Department says that districts have been sharing this kind of information for nearly a decade, and that the new initiative simply enables that data to be shared in a safer, more efficient fashion…

Disciplinary records, attendance records, special-needs records, testing records, addresses, phones numbers, email-addresses and birth-dates are among some of the data that can be shared with the third-party vendors contracting with state and city districts.

Opponents of inBloom are outraged by the prospect of corporations profiting from student information that parents never consented to release…

NYSED has a different take.
 
"I'm not sure there's consent involved. This is regular student information that when parents register a child for school. They give up," Tom Dunn, spokesman for NYSED tells the Voice.  

New things are always scary, especially to parents. Most parents understand that to a degree their childrens' information is "public" as soon as they enter the school system, but they also are accustomed to getting those release forms from school that say it's okay to use their childrens' images from a school event on the website, or if a reporter is going to be at the school for an event the parents get a form asking for permission for their child's name to be used. Thus it is entirely reasonable for parents to be upset if they find out after the fact that their childrens' personal info is being used without them proactively giving their permission.

It's also reasonable for parents to be worried because there are private, third-party vendors involved. Given the raft of data breaches at credit card companies, banks, governmental agencies and other entities entrusted with our personal info you can understand how parents might feel their children are being made vulnerable by this kind of program.

Even if the goal of the program is noble, and the intent pure, it would behoove the participating school districts to aggressively inform the parents and public of what they're doing with the students' information even if they aren't required to by law. That would go a long way towards a successful implementation of the program, and quite frankly it might be critical to the success of the program. If parents don't buy in, or actively try to opt out on behalf of their children, then the program's doomed to failure anyway so the schools might as well get buy in from the get-go.

Odd Couple Circa 2013

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So these two good friends and neighbors get divorced from their wives and end up building two houses on one lot, making them something like semi-roommates. From the story in the Wall Street Journal:

Now both divorced, the two friends still hang out with each other and their current girlfriends. But they are even closer neighbors: They live in nearly identical, 1,500-square-foot, three-story wood-and-glass contemporary houses, which they built on the same lot.

The tall, rectangular-shaped twin houses, each with three bedrooms and 2½ bathrooms, are separated by about 30 feet—close enough that the occupants can see into each other's windows. It's like a modern version of "The Odd Couple", says Corey Martin, who designed the project with architect Ben Kaiser of Portland-based PATH Architecture. "On some level, it's every guy's dream. They get their freedom but they're not doing it alone. There's built-in camaraderie."



The friends say their arrangement is working well. They have dinner a couple of nights a week. They share an Internet account. They still go skiing, camping, biking and hiking together. "I know when Ted is home, who is going in and out of his house, which lights are on, what he is up to," says Mr. Zehetbauer. "It's companionship. Other people come and go. The only constant is Roland," adds Mr. Wardlaw. They share the outdoor space and are currently planning a vegetable garden together.

A Fun (and Inexpensive!) Member Recognition Idea

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MemberTYBox
At PTAA our membership director and Ambassador Committee came up with a really fun member recognition program:

  • They ordered blank Chinese take-out boxes
  • They ordered fortune cookies with fun messages including:
    • We can see your
      future with PTAA!
    • For a good time call 336.294.4428!
    • LIKE us on Facebook!
    • Happy Anniversary from PTAA!
    • Legislation and Education. We do it all!
    • Your lucky number is 33.62.94.44.28 
  • They put eight cookies in each box and sealed the box with a sticker printed with our logo.
  • Then the ambassadors split up our member list and each agreed to visit six of them to hand deliver each a box and window cling with our logo printed on it.

It's a really creative and inexpensive way to acknowledge our members, and of course you could use it as a customer recognition tool in non-membership businesses.

IRS Should Just Hire a Bunch of Direct Marketers and Listen to My Mom

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During a show about how much tax revenue the IRS doesn't collect – 17% or $450 billion a year – the folks at Freakonomics talk about how a little-known unit of the British government called the Behavioral Insights Unit gooses the UK's tax collection efforts:

One of my favorite examples of this comes from a small unit in the British government called the Behavioral Insights Team.  What they do is experiment with all kinds of cheap and simple nudges.  For instance, sending out letters that appeal to the herd mentality in all of us. Here is the unit’s director, David Halpern:

David HALPERN: So what we do is we simply tell people something, which is true, which is 9 out of 10 people in Britain pay their tax on time. And by putting that single bit of information into the top of a letter, it makes people much more likely themselves to pay the tax on time.

GARDNER: So it’s peer pressure?

DUBNER: That’s exactly right — we like to run with the herd.  They also tried another super simple trick, which was just handwriting a message on the outside of the tax envelope.  This message would just say simply that the contents are important, but it’s written in hand.

HALPERN: Of course people are like ‘oh my God, but how can that possibly be practical?’ Well we’ve now just got the results in. It turns out that for every pound or every dollar that you spend on getting, you know, someone to write on the envelope, you get $2,000 return.  A one to 2,000 return. So it’s a nice simple illustration of these small things and how consequential they are.

Anyone who's spent even a week working as a direct marketer could have told you this would work. The IRS should just hire a bunch of laid off direct marketing folks and they'd pay for themselves in no time.

Later in the podcast they talk about an idea from a behavioral psychiatrist at Duke:

Dan Ariely, a behavioral psychologist at Duke, has a nice idea: to let taxpayers direct a small portion of their tax money to the parts of the government that they most care about:

Dan ARIELY: So I’m not sure what’s the right percent — five percent or ten percent.  But what if we got people to have a say about where some of the taxes go? All of a sudden you’re not looking at it as you against the government.  You’d have to look carefully at all that the government is doing for us — building libraries and roads, and education and military and so on and so forth and say, what do I care about?

My mother made this same argument when I was a kid. Her argument was that if she could earmark even one or two percent for any program/department of her choosing she'd feel better about paying her taxes in general. She also made another interesting point: taxpayers would be able to indicate with their dollars which programs they felt were most important. In essence we'd be able to tell which programs were truly valued by us, the taxpayers, and not have to trust politicians to divine what we wanted. That's why I figured it would never come to pass, and I haven't been wrong yet.

They’ve Got B.O. and Heartburn and Gas

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Former Republican US Senator Alan Simpson, quoted in an interview by the LA Times in reference to "tea party-inspired Republicans":

He reserved his greatest contempt for the tea party-inspired Republicans who equate compromise with capitulation and view obstruction as progress. "Some of them," he said, "are as rigid as a fireplace poker, but without the occasional warmth."

He leaned forward, stabbing a bony finger into a wood conference table. "Let me tell you something, pal: If you are a legislator and you can't learn to compromise an issue without compromising yourself, get out of the business. In fact, don't ever get married, either. You don't want any part of that."

Compromise is the only way anything has ever gotten done, he went on, going back to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both of which amounted to more give than take. "They don't like that," he said of the tea partyers’ unwillingness to bargain. "They get nasty. They smell bad. They've got b.o. and heartburn and gas. They're seethers."

HT to Fec for the link.

No Holding and No Folding

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In poker knowing when to hold or fold is a critical skill. In North Carolina the legislature has decided that some people can't be trusted with knowing whom to hold (that would be a reference to the ban on same-sex marriage) or when to fold (that would be a reference to a proposed law that would require a two year waiting period and compulsory counseling for any married couples pursuing a no-fault divorce). Combine that two year waiting period with loosened gun regs and you have yourself a recipe for some interesting situations don't you?